Sunday, November 7, 2010

So 5 of us made it to the November tournament (which unfortunately clashed with a number of other things). Due to the small size, we opted for a multi-deck tournament, and ended up cutting it down to only two rounds due to time constraints.

Brendan got off to a fast start, with an early Lilith's Blessing and getting a minion setup with a sniper rifle and sports bike early. I got Smash and Hektor out, but didn't draw much of the farm of my deck. I was able to land a couple of early Kines and then bleed with a Iron Glare to weaken Kevin considerably, but he was working through Richard at a fair rate, so I ended up burning his smallest vampire with a rush from Hektor to slow him down. Marc & Richard each had more votes than I did, and with Marc and I both looking to call votes, and Brendan able to block Marc most of the time, the was a lot of negotiating about during the game. Kevin also played a fair bit of vote defense, which all combined to slow me down once I had Kevin low on pool. Kevin did get Richard down to a couple of pool, but Richard managed to get a No Secrets down, and Kevin wasn't able to stealth over it after that (which, given that he was playing FoS, rather surprised the rest of the table). I blocked one of Marc's bleeds with Hektor, and a Death of My Conscience & a Burning Wrath from Marc later, both minions were burnt, which slowed me down further. Brendan then played an Antediluvian Awakening, and I was able to last long enough for it to kill Kevin. The game timed out shortly after that. It's not clear quite how the table would have folded from where the game timed out - Marc would have probably had me, but Brendan was able to block several of his actions, which would have made it a slow process. While Richard wasn't really able to go forward strongly, he was pretty well setup defensively and no-one had the stealth to go over his no secrets at that point. Marc had managed to generate a lot of pool via Voter Caps, so that probably would have given him the game eventually.

The second game saw Kevin (!Brujah rush) bleeding Marc (Kiasyd power bleed) bleeding Richard (Guhuri Brutual Influence bleed with OBF) bleeding me (Groteques) bleeding Brendan (old school Lasombra politics). This is the first time the Groteque deck has really struggled in a game - while I got Gerald Windham out (whose vote special was really influential), I didn't draw a location early and so struggled to bring out the Grotesques. An early "Blood Weakens" from Richard also made life awkward for everyone on the table. Brendan got off to a very fast start, with a first turn Info Highway and a second turn Zillah's valley. Kevin's deck struggled, without the vote push available to get votes through and not enough ways for Hektor to get into combat. Marc's didn't draw into the power part of the power bleed combo, and so Richard was able to build up fairly easily. While I was able to block him several times, I mainly drew prevent from the combat package, so I was never able to serious inconvenience any of his minions. Gerald's votes from other titles scattered around the table, and the presence of 3 prisci, meant that Brendan didn't have the vote lock, and thus wasn't able to push through Kevin that quickly. Kevin also played a Protected Resources, which delayed Brendan bleeding him out a few turns.

I eventually fell to the Guhuri. Brendan probably should have ousted Kevin, but didn't draw out stealth on a couple of bleeds before bouncing them on, which meant Kevin was able to block, and allowed Richard to Majesty and them farm or hunt to setup for the next turn. This allowed Richard to oust Brendan and then Kevin in quick succession, and the pool and minion advantage meant he was able to win the two player contest with Marc, despite having exhausted his library, although it was a close run thing.